Tea-Party Bragging Rights

5022010

Sounds like a great kick-off for the first ever Tea-Party Convention. FYI… You will see and hear many references over the weekend, and over the next year, that the price of entry was either “expensive” or that people were charged “$550 per ticket”. From what I read just a short time ago, it doesn’t cost a thing to get in to the Convention, but don’t expect the media to move away from their game-plan.

Anyway, I think you will enjoy some of the comments from the first night of the Convention, but don’t let the whining from the media distract you. I fully support the Tea-Party Movement!

The opening-night speaker at first ever National Tea Party Convention ripped into President Obama, Sen. John McCain and “the cult of multiculturalism,” asserting that Obama was elected because “we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country.”

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Fmr GOP Rep. Rob Simmons discusses his run for Senate and Obama’s budget.

The speaker, former Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., told about 600 delegates in a Nashville, Tenn., ballroom that in the 2008 election, America “put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House … Barack Hussein Obama.”

Tancredo did not stop at the Democratic president — ripping McCain, R-Ariz., the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, for shaping up to be a repeat of “Bush 1 and Bush 2.”

“Thank God John McCain lost the election,” he said, voicing his belief that McCain would have presided over big budgets and lacked a tough stand against immigration.

Tancredo served 10 years in the House of Representatives and made a name for himself with his ardent opposition to immigration. He believes the 2008 election served to galvanize the right.

“This is our country,” he told the crowd. “Let’s take it back.”

Tancredo’s speech received enthusiastic applause at times, but the crowd did not fill the large ballroom at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center.

Rancor Among Tea Party Factions?

As opponents of big government converged on what has been billed as the first national tea party convention, organizers hoped the event would further “galvanize” the populist movement and help it gather momentum after a string of recent conservative electoral victories.

But some wondered what gave organizers the right to hold the event in the first place, never mind to charge hundreds of dollars for admission.

“Nobody really is entitled to stand up and say, ‘This is the National Tea Party anything,'” conservative blogger Dan Riehl said of the three-day convention being put on by a Nashville-based defense attorney, Judson Phillips, and his wife.

Phillips told ABC News that he put the convention together to try to harness the political power of the tea party movement, which helped fuel rallies and marches last summer, and helped mobilize support for Scott Brown last month in Massachusetts.

Organizers said some 600 attendees have paid $549 for access to two full days of events that culminate Saturday evening in a keynote speech by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin at a banquet that reportedly will feature a lobster-and-steak dinner.

While the convention itself is sold out, tickets to the banquet only were still on sale late Wednesday for $349. So far, organizers said, more than 500 banquet-only tickets have been sold.

Some tea party factions are furious.

“When somebody steps up and says their purpose in putting on a convention like this is to make a profit, that’s really the antithesis of a grass roots movement,” said Mark Meckler, of the Tea Party Patriots faction.

“[Tea party activists] generally are not the type of people who would gravitate to some very expensive hotel to dine on lobster and steak and listen to someone speak,” Riehl said in an interview Wednesday.

Convention spokesman Mark Skoda acknowledged Wednesday that Phillips and his wife, Sherry Phillips, founders of the for-profit Tea Party Nation Inc., will “make a few bucks” on the event. But Skoda questioned why that should be anyone’s concern.

“Have we gone so far in the Obama-socialist view of the nation that ‘profit’ is a bad word — in particular, if we’re using it to advance the conservative cause?” Skoda asked.

The convention plans to feature a lecture called, “Correlations Between the Current Administration and Marxist dictators in Latin America.”

The spokesman said the proceeds would be used to fund upcoming Tea Party nation events.

Politico reported last month that the former Alaska governor would receive as much as $100,000 to address the convention.

But Palin wrote in a USA Today op-ed article Wednesday that she would “not benefit financially” from the event, pledging to throw any compensation she would receive “right back to the cause.”

As she no longer serves in office, Palin is free to accept the speaking fee without encountering any legal issues. But two sitting members of congress, Rep. Michelle Bachman R-Minn., and Rep. Marsha Blackburn R-Tenn., pulled out of the event late last month citing concern over House ethics rules.

While initially restricting access to the convention to a select number of news organizations, like Fox News, the Wall Street Journal and World Net Daily, organizers announced this week that Palin’s speech would be aired on cable and the Internet, allowing a broader audience to hear the former governor’s address.

“We will have transparency that, frankly, is surprising to many people,” Skoda said.

Palin addressed the controversy surrounding the convention in her USA Today piece.

“As with all grass roots efforts, the nature of this movement means that sometimes the debates are loud and the organization is messier than that of a polished, controlled machine,” she wrote, saying she “thought long and hard about my participation,” before deciding to honor her commitment to attend.

Ahead of Palin’s speech, several breakout sessions are planned for Friday, under titles such as “Technology in the Tea Party Movement,” “Defeating Liberalism Via the Primary Process” and “Why Christians Must Engage.”

“This convention is a way to galvanize the conservative movement in a way that the general rallies do not,” Skoda said. “We have seen a maturing of the movement to the point of moving protests into activism. And that activism is starting to drive results in elections.”

On Saturday morning, Skoda will take part in a panel discussion entitled, “Where the Tea Party Movement Goes From Here.”